If you've ever walked down the street and smelled the delicious smell of cooking, you've stumbled upon a previously unknown, yet significant, source of air pollution.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, “If you can smell it, it's likely affecting air quality.”
what's happening?
A new study by NOAA's Chemical Sciences Laboratory finds that pollutants emitted from cooking are responsible for nearly a quarter of human-caused air pollution in cities.
These pollutants are primarily volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs are important indicators of air quality because they contribute to both ozone and particulate matter pollution.
NOAA researchers found that an average of 21% of anthropogenic VOCs in outdoor air can be traced to cooking. These numbers varied depending on the time of day and ranged from 10% to 30% of the total anthropogenic VOCs.
By way of background, anthropogenic VOC pollution in downtown Las Vegas can be categorized as follows: Half comes from volatile chemicals, and the other half is evenly split between cooking and vehicle pollution.
Why is this discovery important?
It’s true that Las Vegas has nearly 700 restaurants per 100,000 residents, making it especially vulnerable to food-related air pollution issues.. But these findings probably apply everywhere and have existed unnoticed for a long time.
National emissions inventories previously attributed only 1% of harmful pollution to cooking activities. This means that we underestimated the impact of cooking activities by a factor of 5 to 10.
According to Matt Coggon, lead author of the study, this means that “emissions from cooking may be the largest source of VOCs missing from current air quality models in urban areas, with potentially important implications for air quality management.”
Air quality is very important to your health. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, 800 people die prematurely every hour due to complications from air pollution. Other air quality-related health issues include increased risk of stroke, cancer, heart disease, and various respiratory diseases.
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What is being done to reduce cooking-related contamination?
Researchers hope their findings could lead to policy changes to more effectively regulate emissions, Cogon explained.
“Over the years, we have measured all kinds of different VOCs from a variety of sources across the United States… [but] “Measurements in urban areas continued to observe certain types of compounds that could not be explained. For policymakers to understand the effectiveness of their decisions, they need a complete picture of emissions and sources. “It is important to do so,” he said.
For the general public, obtaining air quality monitors and air filters is a quick and effective means to reduce exposure to air pollutants.
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